HOMICIDE - LIFE on the STREET

          Like most people who write about TV shows on the internet, I hold "The Wire" in fairly high regard.  And, like most people who feel this way, I couldn't help but be disappointed by the conclusion of the show, not because the final episode was disappointing (far, far from it) but because there wouldn't be any more episodes.  No new cover of that oh-so-familiar Tom Waitts song, no new facet of dysfunctional bureaucracy to be picked apart.  Nothing.
          I had spent a substantial amount of time reading about the show online, looking into the backgrounds of  David Simon and his cast, crew, and writing staff, and a show I'd never heard of before kept popping up: "Homicide: Life on the Street".  Both shows were based on Simon's book, "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets", and seemingly every familiar face from "The Wire" was on "Homicde" at some point in time, be it a single episode appearance or a recurring role.  The show was far from perfect, as is the standard for network television, but it helped pave the way for the higher caliber of television that we see today, and it began Simon's quest to demythify the modern television police detective.  With solid writing, and a strong ensemble cast (Ned Beatty, Richard Belzer, Andre Braugher, Clark Johnson, Yaphet Kotto, Melissa Leo, Jon Polito, to name a few) I never felt my time watching this show was wasted, even during its less-than stellar moments.
          I'll be covering two episodes per week, with posts going up every Monday and Wednesday night.  Now, without further ado:


S01E01
"Gone for Goode" (B)

"The greatest lie, I think, in dramatic TV is the cop who stands over a body and pulls up the sheet and mutters 'Damn' and looks down sadly.  To a real homicide detective, it's just a day's work."  - David Simon (PBS Documentary, "Anatomy of a 'Homicide: Life on the Street'")


          And so it begins.  Detectives Steve Crosetti and Meldrick Lewis (played by Jon Polito and Clark Johnson, respectively) scour a crime scene for a shell casing.  Crosetti muses philosophically to Lewis' annoyance, who calls him a "fat-headed guinea" and a "salami brain".  Less than one minute into the first episode, two major misconceptions of police detectives have been tossed out the window.  We are used to the Joe Friday model of police work, single-minded and focused on the task at hand, and we are used to seeing partnered detectives who get along swimmingly.  "That's the problem with this job," says Crosetti. "It's got nothing to do with life."  We get our first glimpse of "the board", a large dry-erase job that lists the names of homicide victims underneath the names of the detectives responsible for their investigation.  Red names indicate an ongoing or unsolved investigation, while the names in black are the cases that have been "brought down".  Every once in a while, a name goes up in blue, but that's a ways down the road.

During the show's run, Baltimore's homicide unit stopped using "the board",
as it was shown to decrease morale.  This was an unpopular move among
the detectives, and it would eventually be brought back into use.

          Enter Tim Bayliss (Kyle Secor), the young rookie detective who fucks up right off the bat and mistakes Crosetti for shift Lieutenant Al Giardello (Yaphet Kotto), which is fairly understandable.  Giardello gives him the dime tour of the station, during which Det. Kay Howard (recent Academy Award winner Melissa Leo) inquires as to the whereabouts of Det. John Munch (Richard Belzer), the small screen's most enduring detective character.  In fact, his recent appearance as Munch on "30 Rock" broke a record he had once tied (with an appearance on "The Wire") for having played the same character on the most separate television shows.

John Munch would like to re-iterate: He is not Montel Williams.

          Munch is at Johns Hopkins with his partner, Det. Stan Bolander (Ned Beatty) interrogating a potential suspect in a double-stabbing.  The suspect's story is full of holes, and Munch's sarcastic and wise-cracking facade quickly erodes to reveal the bountiful contempt he has for people he deems to be intellectually inferior.  Though this makes him sound like a giant asshole, which he is, Belzer plays him in such a way that makes him likable, and had he been played by someone like Jason Priestly (who was NBC's first choice for the role) no one would remember the name John Munch.

          Crosetti and Lewis continue to work their case, and Crosetti continues to annoy the shit out of Lewis, this time with his conspiracy theories regarding the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.  It's an endearing character trait, as his fixation with Lincoln continues in later episodes, but Crosetti's character only appears in season one's nine episodes.  Back at headquarters Howard and partner Det. Beau Felton (played by an unusually tolerable Daniel Baldwin) bicker over who should answer the phone.  Whoever answers the phone becomes the primary investigator for the case in question, and Felton has been in a slump, unable to close any of his cases.  Ultimately, Howard takes the call, which leads them to the decomposing body of a bill collector in another man's basement.  The prime suspect, the owner of the house, is nowhere to be found, that is, until he calls his own number and Howard answers the phone.  Felton kicks himself for not answering the phone, and so begins the never-ending misfortunes of Beau "Shit Luck" Felton.

          Meanwhile, Bolander takes potshots at Munch's ego, referencing the body of one Jenny Goode, the name from which the title of the episode stems.  Although Goode's death has been officially ruled a hit-and-run, Bolander thinks otherwise.  It's a very brief and subtle scene, but potent nonetheless.  Jenny Goode may very well have been murdered, but Munch (nor any other detective) wants to open up a case that has already been closed.  But Munch eventually succumbs to Bolanders persistent guilt-tripping, and looks at the case file with fresh eyes.

          Frank Pembleton (Andre Braugher), legendary for his opinionated nature, New York heritage, and lack of a partner, is finally being forced to pair up with Beau Felton, whose witless manner stands in stark contrast to Pembleton's cerebral style of police work.  Tensions erupt quickly, prompted by an unusually difficult-to-find police-issue Chevrolet Cavalier in the station's parking lot.  While searching for said vehicle, they encounter the rookie Bayliss, who Felton insists they should bring along to "see his first dead guy".  At the crime scene, a cheap motel, Howard and Felton go to canvass, leaving Pembleton and Bayliss in the motel room with the body.

          Later in the episode, the suspect in the motel room killing is apprehended.  As he approaches his car and slides his key into the lock, police sirens sound and the flashing lights draw his attention.  But we don't see this just once.  Three separate takes of the suspect being startled by the police are shown in quick succession, an editing style that would become a signature of the series.  This must have baffled much of the viewing audience back in 1993, when TV was much more tame and always done by the numbers.

          While Pembleton is outwardly reluctant to partner with Bayliss, he can't contain his glee in showing Bayliss his interrogative technique, which his describes as a form of salesmanship.  In the interrogation room (or "the box", as the detectives affectionately call it) Frank Pembleton shines, like Ali in a boxing ring, or Sheen in a shady coke den.  Bayliss protests Pembleton's constitution-bending methods after the confession is rendered, a confrontation in which Pembleton explodes.  We've all seen enough TV to know where this dynamic is going.  The unlikely combo with a rocky start always ends in friendship, and trite as it may be, Braugher and Secor make it fun to watch.

          Bayliss eventually takes his first call as a primary, leading him to the body of a very young girl who lies dead in the Baltimore rain.  He looks down sadly at the body, raising his badge to the officers on the scene, barely able to mutter the word "homicide" in order to identify himself as the investigator.  This is one of the rare occasions on the show where a detective is even remotely affected by the body of a victim, and although it somewhat contradicts Simon's quote from the beginning of this post, by the end of this episode, who do you pity more: the slain girl, or the rookie detective?

Potent Quotables

• "The board.  Open cases are in red, closed cases are in black.  You look up there, you know exactly where you stand.  About how many things in life can you say that." - Giardello, to Bayliss.
• "Don't you ever lie to me like I am Montel Williams!" - Munch, to witless suspect.
• "Excuse me, I didn't notice, was Abraham Lincoln on the board this morning?" - Lewis, to Crosetti.

Tags: Homicide: Life on the Street, NBC, David Simon, The Wire, Richard Belzer, John Munch, Clark Johnson, Meldrick Lewis, Yaphet Kotto, Al Giardello, Kyle Secor, Tim Bayliss, Andre Braugher, Frank Pembleton, Melissa Leo, Kay Howard, Jon Polito, Steve Crosetti, Salami Brain, Fat-Headed Guinea, Ned Beatty, Stan Bolander.